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A trip on a Virgin Galactic sub orbital space flight next year will set you back at least $200,000 …..we can all dream! But will these trips ever be affordable and should public money be used to fund them?

Zero gravity

A report published this week recommends that Britain invests more money in the space industry in order to take advantage of key market opportunities including space tourism.

Take advantage of the current media coverage to run a discussion lesson on space tourism.

Some ideas to get your students thinking…

How far could a space tourism trip take you?

How long will it be before we can book a hotel on the moon or holiday on Mars?

How much risk are the public willing to take? What if there was an accident?

Do you need to be as fit as an astronaut to go?

What is the carbon footprint of a trip into space?

The increasing public interest in space travel may well be of a benefit to scientists doing research by making extra funding available. However, it could also be a hindrance if there was an increase in health and safety scares linked to space exploration or if funding gets diverted away from research and invested in space tourism instead.

To get your class discussing this topic you could get groups to each research a different area and follow this with mixed group discussions using the marketplaceformat. Run a search on space tourism on the web to find multiple news articles and websites with both sides to the story.

As part of the Exploring the Universe Theme Day at the Science Museum on 17th May the Talk Science team will be running a discussion activity on Space tourism for secondary school groups. To book or for more information give our friendly bookings team a call on 020 7942 4777.

TV naturalist Chris Packham said last week in a newspaper article that pandas should be left to face extinction. It’s a shocking statement from a man who is well-known for his love of animals, and one that will provoke strong reactions from your students.

Pandas appeal to peoples’ emotional side, and they have become a poster-child for conservation. As Packham says “It’s easier to raise money for something fluffy”.

Quite.

But panda conservation is expensive, and due to the animals’ limited habitat and extremely restricted diet, it is perhaps unlikely to be ultimately successful. Doesn’t it make more sense to use the same money to protect other species which are more likely to survive in the long-run?

Dr Mark Wright, chief scientist at the WWF maintains that the pandas’ natural habitat in china should be conserved, not just to keep the pandas from extinction, but also the myriad of other wildlife living in the same area.

One way to get your students to really engage with these issues is to run a marketplace activity. Assign each of your students a persona, get them to research the issues and then present their case to the class.

Some ideas for groups include – Chris Packham, WWF workers, rainforest conservationists. You could even get some of the children to be the spokesperson for pandas, or to represent the Yangtze river dolphin, an animal that has become extinct very recently and was sadly much too ugly to attract much in the way of conservation cash.

Is extinction just a part of life on earth? Do your students feel comfortable deciding which species to save? Can any of your students describe the WWF logo?